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Dr Cecil Cook

A Vision For Australia's Health Dr Cecil Cook at Work

The Corpus

The Cook Corpus is a selection of over 100 of Dr Cook’s most important papers; some published, others archived and some personal letters. The Corpus papers explain and expand some of the endnotes in his biography. The Corpus is categorised to link papers to specific subjects to encourage informed research.

These 600 pages disclose Dr Cook’s ideas and aspirations and his vision for Australia’s health.

This is the Cecil Cook who has not been revealed by his writing, until now.

The source

The original papers, prepared between 1919 and 1981, are unchanged in content and have been retyped to ensure a searchable record and a more consistent style. The Cook Corpus brings together some correspondence available in the National and Western Australian archives with reports and articles in his personal files.

The Cook Corpus was initially intended as a repository for documents referenced in endnotes of Cook’s biography, A Vision for Australia’s Health: Dr Cecil Cook at work, for readers who wanted the details needed to better understand an endnote. The Corpus papers are listed in book chapter and endnote (or year date) sequence. Other interesting papers and reports Cook expand the resource available to researchers and scholars.  

Clusters of Corpus papers

Cook was the type of public service officer who gave ‘frank and fearless’ advice to his seniors on preferred priorities and policies. In the 1930s, before the discipline of public policy was established, he wrote a series of policy proposals that developed from challenging questions and simple themes to complex strategies. Most were ignored. From 1950, he was an advisor to the Commonwealth Director-General of Health. There are more articles pieces and conference papers in this era, some with seemingly similar titles on common subjects, but prepared from different perspectives. In retirement, Cook wrote a number of opinion pieces that provided the lessons of history in contemplating changes for a better future. In total, these papers indicate how Cook reinforced key messages through repeated emphasis on topics and themes.

The Corpus supplements the biography

Readers of the biography are likely to search the Corpus for specific documents relevant to an endnote. Researchers will tend to search the Corpus using key words relevant to their projects. A researcher browsing the Web might refer to the table that cross references the documents to key subject categories and select resources on their special interests. A truly dedicated reader with an interest in broad-scoped public health or in Indigenous history might read the whole 300,000 words in 660 pages of the Corpus as a supplement to the biography. 

The aim of making the Cook Corpus available on a publicly accessible website is to provide ample information about Cecil Cook, his specialisations and work and encourage informed research of the history that underlies so much of current public policy and practice.

Browse Corpus Documents